Nahnatchka Khan Quotes

My hope is that shows like 'Fresh Off the Boat' open the door for even more of those kinds of characters for Asian actors and actresses.

I want to see more Asian. I want to see more Latin. I want more Indian. There's more than Mindy Kaling out there, guys! There's more than Bai Ling.

Growing up, I never saw any Asian faces on TV, so it didn't feel like a viable option.

Growing up, I remember watching TV, and I didn't see a lot of people who looked like me, especially someone who passed as a glamorous model on a mainstream TV show.

Even if you look at 'American Idol,' or 'X-Factor,' or 'The Voice' or anything, it was always difficult to see an Asian or an Asian-American make it to a certain point.

I don't understand why people don't understand that the world of TV should look like the world outside of TV.

There needs to be more film directors of colour. They bandy about the word 'diversity' a lot, but when I say 'of colour,' I mean Asian, black - I mean people of all colour. We need to have those voices given the opportunity, not told that their films will not be distributed or will not sell well abroad.

More Asians need to be on television as a positive role model.

Shows like 'Seinfeld' and 'Friends,' they have, like, one or two damn characters throughout the whole series that are minorities.

Certainly, living in the U.S., as I have for over two decades, you see how Asians are portrayed in the media... I didn't see myself represented, you know, when I used to look at ads on TV.

When I was a kid, it wasn't very often that I could go to the movies and see an entire movie carried on the shoulders of someone who looked like me.

Casting ethnic characters is a very hard thing to do, but it's important. It's also interesting.

I think what we need, especially in publishing, is more commissioning editors and editors who are people of colour.

London's not a white city. So why should our catwalks be so white?

I definitely intend to create my own work in the future so that we don't have to keep saying, We don't have work for black women.'

'Black film,' that term allows studios to just marginalize a movie and say, 'We've made our black film. We've made our film with people of color in it,' as opposed to, 'I just feel like people of color should be in every genre.'

I've always wanted to be in comedy... growing up with Asian parents and not seeing yourself represented in media - it was always just a daydream.

When I was a little girl, there was no Variety Latino. When I was a little girl, there was no nothing. There were very few roles for people like myself.

I have a responsibility to diversity onstage, but one of the things I've heard about our production of 'Boys' is that it's a bunch of white guys. Well, race is a component of this play. You can't just drop people in willy-nilly and say, 'Well, we're going for diversity.'

When I was in school, you never saw anyone who looked like us that was on TV. And that was really weird for me because there's so many people of South Asian descent in America - in the world.

Point-blank, there is not enough diversity in media.

America seems much more diverse and has more exciting casting - they really take risks.

I get that people want more diversity in TV and film, and I stand by that. I stand in solidarity with better diversity in TV shows, especially for Asian actors. I agree with that 100 per cent.

I'm Asian, and I'm an actress, and I've been doing this since I was a teenager, so if anyone understands the conversation about misrepresentation and underrepresentation, it's me. I live and breathe it; this is my life.

Because if Asian American content is seen as a trend, the way that like leggings are in, then that's not true representation or inclusion. The mainstream doesn't have to worry about that.